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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

> At best what happens is that you start to notice patters that look like something but you are aware that this is pattern recognition and not real thing.

Not everyone is able to identify the difference between real patterns and fake, drug-induced pattern recognition, though.

I’ve even seen it happen to a friend who was otherwise a very logical, rational person. After a period of experimenting with psychedelics, he became attached to some physically impossible ideas for a period of a few years. Eventually he started recognizing that the ideas were illogical and triggered by the drug, but for a while he was thoroughly convinced that some things he “learned” during his trip were, in fact, part of a reality that the rest of us simply had seen yet.

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A) what was he on and B) are you sure it is just the drugs at fault here.

First, this sounds more like a DMT experience than anything. Loads of people convinced the "entities" are real. For LSD, this would be highly unusual.

Second, the one long term effect psychedelics arguably have any link to is triggering the first break in schizophrenics. Keep in mind it does not appear to cause schizophrenia, just trigger it if it hasn't happened already. So there's really really good reason to see if perhaps it wasn't just the trips leading him to this state.

I am not denying that for some people hallucinations are possible and dangerous. I think my main point is twofold. First in the general debate hallucinations take too much space in comparison to other psychedelic experiences. Second I think that for medical use hallucinations are not the main obstacle. For example what you describe I wouldn't consider hallucinations. LSD can definitely induce certain ideas and motivations into you and this is the area of experience which I would like people were more aware of.

> First in the general debate hallucinations take too much space in comparison to other psychedelic experiences. Second I think that for medical use hallucinations are not the main obstacle.

I think you’re downplaying the issue too much.

Whatever you want to call them, the illogical thoughts induced by psychedelics can be a significant problem for people who can’t separate them from reality.

There is a lot of talk about how psychedelics can change people’s minds and make them open to new ideas, but there has been much less talk about how not all of those drug-induced ideas are actually good or true ideas.

Okay, maybe my wording was off but I do in fact agree with you. I argue that hallucination is one property and personality-change is another. The article above says that they are working on hallucination-free lsd. Therefore the lsd they produce will still be personality-changing possibly. Therefore we are both worried that there might be something which makes lsd possibly dangerous and therefore unsuitable for wide medical use.

I happen to be well suited for psychedelic experience but I do have close one who went thought few months of LSD-induced anxiety and they won't ever take it again because of it.

Nevertheless I am in fact in favour of trying out the possibilities of lsd and I think that the policy of harm-reduction with specialised control system can outweigh the possible risks. The two most important takeaways which are repeated endlessly in this context is that one should treat LSD with high degree of respect and use allergic method at the beginning to find the ways in which one is affected by the drug. You start with half dose or even quarter dose. You take a break and observe yourself. Then you can take slightly larger dose. You observe yourself again. Etc. Second there should be someone more experienced who oversees you during the trip and after it so that if there are any troublesome effect which you yourself might omit then there will be someone to catch it and stop your from taking more. Currently both of those points are difficult because of criminalisation and I think that until this is changed we will be floating in myths (both positive and negative ones). And as long as we are floating in myths we won't be able to resolve even the simplest empirical / verifiable questions about the consequences of LSD usage.

What were these ideas?

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